Friday, May 25, 2007

A long time ago, before Star Wars sold out, the Force turned farce and R2-D2 became a postal pimp, there was magic in the air.

It was the summer of 1977, and I was just about as excited as a 6 year old boy could be.

Although it would be years until I would see the movie, I could watch the TV trailer and it had been billed as "the story of a boy, a girl and a universe." It also had robots and spaceships and cool lightsabers....what more inspiration could an aspiring geek need?

I always liked science fiction, but that trailer changed the way I would look at my world. I was no longer confined to my little home in Wabush Labrador, I now dreamed of exploring the Galaxy and fighting the "bad guys".

I wasn't alone in this. Millions of other people had exactly the same reaction to Star Wars three decades ago. They fell under the spell of the heroic rebel quest of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia and the quasi-religious life force known as "The Force." They booed the galactic fascist Darth Vader, the planet-destroying agent of the evil "dark side" of The Force.

The original Star Wars movie, first released on May 25, 1977, spawned a franchise of six films, countless commercial spin-offs and the multi-billion-dollar Lucasfilm empire run by creator George Lucas.

It changed film forever, creating the ever-expanding universe of entertainment options that modern movie going has become and making "blockbuster" a more important word in Hollywood than "Oscar." This summer's big-ticket "threequels" like Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Shrek the Third all follow a trail of gold blazed by Star Wars.

So let's all pay homage to the biggest geek of them all....God Bless you George Lucas!